TRANSCRIPT: ABC News/Facebook/WMUR Democratic Debate

Jan. 5, 2008

Page 15 of 33

RICHARDSON: No, Charlie, I mean, this is why I'm running for
president. Because until we end this war, we cannot talk about the
issues that need to be dealt with here: universal health care,
improving schools, bringing people together.

RICHARDSON: You can't have change until you end the war, and
that means bringing all of our troops home within a year and leaving
none behind.

GIBSON: I'm going to take this to Senator Obama and to Senator
Edwards.

But -- and I'm not here to debate -- the parliament meets, an oil
law is under consideration, de-Baathification has progressed to some
extent, and were it not for the surge, instead of counting votes, we'd
be counting bodies in the streets.

RICHARDSON: But this has been going on for years, Charlie.

GIBSON: And all of you -- all of you wanted the troops out last
year.

RICHARDSON: There is no serious progress.

GIBSON: Would you have seen this kind of greater security in
Iraq if we had followed your recommendations to pull the troops out
last year, Senator Obama?

OBAMA: Let me respond.

I think the bar of success has become so low that we've lost
perspective on what should be our long-term national interests.

It was a mistake to go in from the start, and that's why I
opposed this war from the start. It has cost us upwards of $1
trillion. It may get close to $2 trillion. We have lost young men
and women on the battlefield, and we have not made ourself safer as a
consequence.

Now, I had no doubt, and I said at the time when I opposed the
surge, that given how wonderfully our troops perform, if we place
30,000 more troops in there, then we would see an improvement in the
security situation and we would see a reduction in the violence.

But understand, we started in 2006 with intolerable levels of
violence and a dysfunctional government. We saw a spike in the
violence. The surge reduced that violence, and we now are, two years
later, back where we started two years ago. We have gone full circle
at enormous cost to the American people.

OBAMA: What we have to do is to begin a phased redeployment to
send a clear signal to the Iraqi government that we are not going to
be there in perpetuity. Now, it will -- we should be as careful
getting out as we were careless getting in.

I welcome the genuine reductions of violence that have taken
place, although I would point out that much of that violence has been
reduced because there was an agreement with tribes in Anbar province,
Sunni tribes, who started to see, after the Democrats were elected in
2006, you know what? -- the Americans may be leaving soon. And we are
going to be left very vulnerable to the Shias. We should start
negotiating now.

That's how you change behavior. And that's why I will send a
clear signal to the Iraqi government. They will have ample time to
get their act together, to actually pass an oil law, which has been --
they've been talking about now for years. They will actually be able
to conduct de-Baathification.

We will support them in all of those efforts.

OBAMA: But what we can't do is to continue to ignore the
enormous strains that this has placed on the American taxpayer, as
well as the anti-American sentiment that it is fanning, and the
neglect that's happening in Afghanistan as a consequence.